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Using the Internet To Subvert Democracy

Posted by kdawson on from the you-thought-diebold-was-bad dept.

david_adams writes "All the recent talk about various polls and elections being pranked or hijacked, serious and silly alike, prompted me to write an article about the technical realities behind online polling, and the political fallout of ever becoming subject to online voting for serious elections. Even if we were to be able to limit voting to legitimate, legal voters, the realities of social networking and the rise of Internet-based movements would dramatically alter the political landscape if online voting were to become commonplace."

7 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Polls != Democracy by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Democracy is the force of the majority over the minority. It doesn't matter if you have elections or not.. that's just a formality.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:Polls != Democracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

      ~ Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States

    2. Re:Polls != Democracy by martin-boundary · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

      He's right, democracy stinks. That's why many people past and present prefer the alternative of ruling the mob, where one percent of the people take away the rights of the other ninety-nine.

    3. Re:Polls != Democracy by adavies42 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      from heinlein:

      Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again too. Who decides?

      Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.

      --
      Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
      -kfg
  2. Re:Elections and online voting. by subreality · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Computers have no practical place in elections unless there is a paper trail to verify the count.

    To the point: Computers' place in elections should be solely to produce a clean, unambiguously marked, human readable, machine countable paper ballot, and the subsequent counting thereof.

  3. Re:Dumb article. by DreamsAreOkToo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I like how it says that internet based movements would alter the political landscape (translation: people would be heard again) but the article is "Using the Internet to Subvert Democracy."

    Since when was Democracy redefined to, "What the rich and powerful want?"

  4. Federalist #10 by supercrisp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Federalist #10 explores how true democracy would be susceptible to faction: http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm. The "founding fathers" were very concerned about how easily swayed the common people are; in fact "mob" comes from "mobile vulgaris," the movable herd. I think Nietzsche's considerations on class resentment apply here too. Think about the true but disturbing populist movements like the French Revolution, the Stalinist and Maoist revolutions and so on. They're nasty things. Populism can become ugly quickly.